All Reading and Composition courses must be taken for a letter grade in order to fulfill this requirement for the Bachelor’s Degree. This course satisfies the first half or the “A” portion of the Reading and Composition requirement.

This course invites critical and creative thinking about the brands that mark us and our everyday lives. We will begin by thinking about corporate brand power today and certain forms of anti-corporate activism that we have seen directed against brands. From here we will investigate the hypothesis that corporate branding strategies (and its critics) have long histories, and close ties to literature and the visual arts.

We will follow the genre of medieval “romance” to the modern romanzo (the Italian word for “novel”) and its offshoots (detective fiction, the post-modern novel). Each of our texts engages with signs of different kinds – coats of arms, allegorical symbols, tattoos, criminal/punitive brands. As we read, we will focus on the relationships between signs, stories, and the identities of individuals and groups. Does every story begin with an image? Does every brand need a story? How do signs establish cohesion or divisions between groups or even within an individual consciousness? Who makes the signs/brands in a given society and what is his/her status: Is she/he an artist, designer, manager, philosopher, technician, critic? What are the qualities of signs/brands that make them “genuine” and/or “effective”? We will take note of Italy’s prominence in branding and design (including the “Made in Italy” brand itself). Our readings also invite consideration of the ways in which Italian brands and identities have been intertwined with those of “others”.

The primary purpose of this course is to help prepare students for college-level work through the development of critical reading and writing skills. The principal writing assignments are four argumentative/interpretive essays, which increase in length as the semester progresses, with drafts. Students will also be asked to complete personal essay at the end of the course with a visual or verbal component; to complete smaller writing & reading exercises during the semester; to keep an informal weekly journal; and to participate actively in class discussions.

Principal Texts:

Naomi Klein, No Logo (2000), selections

Kjetil Fallan and Grace Lees-Maffei, eds. Made in Italy: rethinking a century of Italian design (2014), selections

Chrétien de Troyes, The Knight with the Lion, Yvain 

Sandra Hindman, Sealed in Parchment: Readings of Knighthood in the Illuminated Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes (1994), selections

Italo Calvino, The Cloven Viscount, from Our Ancestors (1952)

Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Tattoo (1975)

Jane Caplan, ed. Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History (2000), selections

Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red (2006), selections

—. “The Pleasures of Reading” and “Bellini and the East” from Other Colors. Essay and a Story (2006).

—. “What We Do When We Read Novels” and “Words, Pictures, Objects” from The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist (2009)

John Updike, “Murder in Miniature: A Sixteenth-Century Detective Story Explores the Soul of Turkey,” The New Yorker (September 3, 2001 issue)

Prerequisites: Successful completion of the UC Entry Level Writing Requirement. Students may not enroll in nor attend R1A/R5A courses without completing this prerequisite